Cooking with Chocolate - Food and Drink - Trend Watch ...

Recently I was invited to a very special meal created by amazing chef Martin Kouprie. Working with Green & Black's Organic, the chef developed an incredible tasting menu creating 10 unique recipes; each one including one of the Green & Black Organic's sinfully good chocolate bars.

If there's a trend that I can easily get behind, it's the trend to incorporate good chocolate into more aspects of our lives.

Kouprie came up with some amazing and imaginative ways of bringing chocolate into our kitchen by combining a beet salad with the shavings of a hazelnut and currant dark chocolate bar, and braising short ribs in the 85% Dark chocolate and then stuffing it into chocolate ravioli. All creative, all unexpected and all delicious. I'm still not sure about throwing chocolate at lobster and octopus, but I can thoroughly endorse all of the other attempts.

My very favourite recipe from the day was the Green & Black's Organic Almond Milk Chocolate Pakora, and Chef Kouprie was good enough to share it.

Pakora

Ingredients:

250 ml Chickpea flour

100 g Green & Black's Organic Almond Chocolate

1 Spanish onion, diced

1 Sweet potato, diced

2 Handfuls of spinach, torn into pieces

125 ml Water

3 Green onion, diced

Salt and pepper, to taste

Grape seed oil for frying

Preparation:

Set up a double boiler or stainless steel bowl that will sit on top of a pot of boiling water. Chop chocolate into even sized pieces. Put chocolate in bowl, place on top of boiling water, gently stir the chocolate with a rubber spatula until it has melted completely and looks smooth.?

Sift the chickpea flour into a medium bowl, add all dry ingredients. Make a well in the center of the flour, gradually pour the water and melted chocolate into the well while mixing with a wooden spoon or your hands to form a thick, smooth batter.

Fill a cast-iron skillet half-way up with grape seed oil. Heat the oil to 360-375 degrees F. Once the oil is heated, carefully place heaping tablespoons of batter into the hot oil. Do not overcrowd the oil because it will cool and result in greasy pakoras. Fry until the pakoras are a light brown. Drain on a cooling rack placed over a cookie sheet.?

Serve with Tamarind Dipping Sauce.

Green & Black didn't stop at the cooking; they offered a range of ways of incorporating their chocolate into your holiday entertaining.

Why not consider surprising your dinner guests with a chocolate bar at each of their place settings? You'll see conversations starting quickly as guests vie to trade their Maya Gold for an Espresso bar, or their White Chocolate for a Dark 85%.

Wrap a stack of the bars together with some raffia ribbon tied in a bow to make a delicious and unexpected hostess gift.

Remember to put a couple into any stocking you may be stuffing this season; the bars will delight dark, milk and white chocolate lovers alike!

Green & Black's Organic offers a deliciuos range of organic, Fair Trade certified 100g chocolate bars priced at $3.89 each. Find them in fine food stores across the country.

Source: http://www.urbanmoms.ca/trend_watch/2012/11/cooking-with-chocolate.html

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